Computer mediated political communication: An empirical approach towards representing political action in the spatial context of Collaborative Virtual Environments - The rise of a virtual-space dependent public sphere
Nikos Kaimakamis, Dimitris Charitos · eCAADe proceedings · 2006
This study focuses on the creation of three-dimensional online spaces, known as Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs), where mediated social interaction amongst participants takes place in real time. It attempts to examine whether it is possible for political communication to flourish in such environments, as a case study of the design aspects needed to be taken into account in creating communicating spaces. We entered the collaborative virtual environment “There” as an avatar and monitored the agenda setting of its two major media. The fact that the whole world is designed as an island complex and holiday resort has an impact on the unwillingness of the avatars to talk about world politics, or even deal with the worlds’ political issues in the official media. Our main conclusion is that public sphere as conceived by those who enter a CVE relies heavily on the way that the world itself is designed. This leads to a series of questions concerning the role of architecture in creating virtual spatial contexts for communication.